We welcome your interest in PhD studies in Life and Biomedical Sciences at Northwestern University (NU LaBS). Our goal is to train scientists in an innovative, interdisciplinary environment while allowing them to grow into confident, independent researchers as they specialize and explore their own areas of interest in depth. We provide graduate students with the financial and academic resources they need in order to take full advantage of Northwestern’s internationally-renowned faculty, its exceptional research and academic culture, and its state-of-the-art facilities on multiple campuses in and around the vibrant city of Chicago.

First-year students can take advantage of the wealth of resources, faculty, research and the academic culture of the university’s two campuses and its affiliate medical centers, but they generally spend the majority of their time on either the Evanston or Chicago campus. The Interdepartmental Biological Sciences program (IBiS) is housed within one of the world’s great liberal arts universities, and emphasizes mechanistic molecular biosciences, as well as the interface of biology with physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering. The Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) is housed in one of America’s leading medical schools and its affiliated hospitals, emphasizing basic and translational biomedical science. Though students will be in residence primarily on one campus, they enjoy ample opportunity to cross campuses and take advantage of resources program-wide. The program as a whole, linking faculty, post-docs and graduate students from the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the McCormick School of Engineering, and the Feinberg School of Medicine truly offers science without boundaries.

PhD programming at Northwestern offers students unparalleled exposure to foundational and cutting-edge specialties in the life sciences, building on the rich history of biological research at Northwestern. These programs prepare students to succeed in the rapidly evolving life and biomedical sciences fields, in part by emphasizing collaborative interdisciplinary studies with an outstanding internationally recognized faculty using state-of-the-art technologies. After an interdisciplinary first year which exposes students to a broad array of biological, bioengineering, and translational bio-medical research, students identify a thesis laboratory and affiliate with a research cluster that provides more focused training in their area of specialization. Through journal and data clubs, symposia, and advanced coursework, the clusters provide forums for continued intellectual development throughout the PhD training.

We welcome you to learn more about opportunities for PhD study in Biology at Northwestern.